The Lady Hobbits
by Daisers
Summary: When their favorite bartender at the Green Dragon goes missing, four lady hobbits find that their search for her takes them from the comfort and safety of the Shire onto a perilous quest full of trolls and treasure, dungeons and ruins and majestic dwarf princes, and all the adventure a hobbit can stand. Why should dude hobbits have all the fun?
1. Chapter 1

"Oh Pearl, I think you must be the perfect hobbit."

Pearl pretended that she hadn't heard what Mungo had last said. After all, he was exclaiming over the lemon scone she had just found in her apron pocket, and she was busy eating it.

He grew bashful at his outburst and contented himself to sit quietly on the bench next to her, twiddling his thumbs and watching the geese landing on the twilit surface of Boggy Pond.

"I know it's been in my pocket all day," Pearl said, remembering her manners, "but would you like a bite of this scone?"

Mungo brightened and took the hunk from her hand. "Gorgeous."

_Blast it all_, Pearl thought, as crumbs rained down Mungo's front and into his foot-tufts. All she'd wanted was to gather some mint from the pondside for her tea, and along had come Mungo, as he always seemed to do when she ventured out of her hobbit hole, and now he wouldn't leave.

"It's getting dark," he said, dusting off his waistcoat. "What do you say to a nice cup of tea at mine?"

There could be no such thing as a nice cup of tea at Mungo's. His mother and father were notoriously uppity hobbits with airs about who was good enough for their dear darling boy. Mungo was in the process of convincing them that Pearl had that honor, but they still regarded her with narrowed eye and upturned nose.

"Thank you, Mungo," Pearl said, hopping briskly to her feet, curls bouncing. "But I really must be going. I have a prior engagement tonight, you see. I hope you enjoyed the scone."

He stood and offered a quaint bow. "Oh, very much! It was simply the best scone I think I've ever had! It seems your talents are numberless! Do drop by for a cup of tea sometime! Whenever you like!"

Pearl hurried up the path and stopped at home just long enough to spruce her curls in the hall mirror and take her pink shawl from a peg. It would be cool out later walking home from The Green Dragon.

Though she was early to their meeting, Pearl saw one of the hobbits she'd come to meet sitting at the bar, scribbling in a book. Pearl edged her way through the milling hobbitfolk to her sister's side.

The crowd at this modest hour was due to it being Wednesday, and thus quiz night, with mystery prizes that often turned out to be only small tins of hobbit-leaf or folios of the owner's original poetry, but lured quite a number of hobbits all the same.

"Ivy! Here already?"

Her sister was startled and smeared a bit of ink into her short blonde curls as she looked around. "I don't know why I bother," she said, beginning a new conversation about something disagreeable.

Pearl stared at the hobbit sitting next to her sister until he hiccuped and gave up his stool. "What is it this time?" she asked, taking a seat.

The pages of Ivy's book held the dainty scratchwork of her architectural sketches. It seemed she had an addition to their hobbit hole in mind, emerging on the side of the hill that bordered Farmer Duckweed's fields: a cozy-looking stable that almost made Pearl wish she could be a pony and nibble oats under its cheerful gables.

"My ponies need a place of their own, and Farmer Duckweed says no - even though that field has lain fallow forever. He's too old to farm it, why not put it to a good use?"

"What about the festival?" Pearl asked, eager to find a more favorable topic.

Ivy drew herself up and shifted on her seat, patting the bar for service. "That's looking much better. Ham Boffin has his flute band, and Ursula Boggy-Hillocks is going to bake a hundred nut rolls. There are plenty more musical hobbits who I'm sure will take part. I've sent invitations all round to Bywater and Frogmorton."

She flipped her book to a page showing plans for how all the tents and tables of the festival would fit in the South Field.

Pearl thought lovingly of Ursula Boggy-Hillocks's nut rolls as she studied the map. Plenty of hobbits would enjoy a spring festival, if they could get past the scandal of a lady hobbit taking charge of it. And what better to complement the dancing and singing of hobbits than her own honey cakes, and perhaps a good cask of strawberry fizz for the youngsters.

"Where's Ruby?" Ivy asked as the bartender turned a disapproving eye on them.

"She's not come in to work today," he said. "What'll it be?"

"She's always here on quiz night!"

He remained unmoved. An older hobbit, he was of the not unpopular opinion that lady hobbits shouldn't come to a public house unchaperoned, or if they did, it should be to wield pitchers of ale among the proper guests.

"Well, get us two pints of brown ale, please," Pearl said stoutly. That was the way to talk to such a one. Give no quarter.

The bartender moved off to obey, grumbling under his breath.

Ivy closed her book. "I wonder if Ruby's all right. I've become quite friendly with her; do you think it would be all right to drop in on her to say hello?"

"Of course."

Pearl admired her sister's charitable nature, though she wouldn't have felt right imposing on a hobbit that she herself didn't know well. She looked around for a clock.

"Let's find a table. Olivia and Rosie-Posie will be here soon."

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	2. Chapter 2

The hobbit in charge of the Green Dragon's trivia night was one who took the word 'trivia' quite literally. A hush had fallen over the warm, crowded tavern as hobbits muttered among their teammates, trying to work out the lifespan of an unharvested radish.

"This is stupid," said Rosie-Posie, a strong hobbit with a love of working the earth, particularly in her patch of pipe-weed. "Who would leave a good radish in the ground?"

Ivy drew radishes idly in her sketchbook, still thinking of Ruby and wondering why she'd stayed away.

"For seeds, of course," Pearl said.

"Germination is only a few days." Olivia put her mop of curls together with Pearl's, twisting a cup of wine on the table. "But I never let them go to seed. I dig them up after a month. I get my seeds from Farmer Duckweed."

They looked around to see if the farmer was there - he'd have a definite advantage on this question.

At the next table a gaggle of red-faced hobbits returned their inquisitive glance with resentful glares.

"Stop trying to cheat," said Fosco Moss. "You've had enough points."

Pearl and Olivia put their backs to him. They had very few points, actually, because they got caught up with more important matters, such as whether they should share a dish of strawberries and cream or each get their own, whether Olivia would debut her nascent banjo skills at the spring festival, and whose hobbit hole they should retire to tonight, dependent on whose larder was most temptingly stocked.

Not everyone at the Green Dragon saw their group as interlopers. A fellow named Olo came round to their table now with a foaming mug in his hand, eyes a bit bleary, smiling from ear to ear, and asked Olivia to dance.

She was a much sought-after hobbit, being generously freckled, playful and kind.

"But there's no music," she said.

Olo nodded to his friend, who was tuning up a fiddle in the corner.

"That should lighten the mood," Rosie-Posie said, sitting up straighter in anticipation of a good tune. "Some hobbits take their trivia so seriously."

Ruby would have rallied them with a few saucy words for Fosco, but without her to cheer them on, the hobbits abandoned their dull game of trivia to dance and nibble the night away, frolicking afterward under the starlit sky to Rosie-Posie's cozy old hobbit hole for a long-stemmed pipe and a board heaped with fruit and cheeses.

The next morning Ivy awoke to the comfortable ticking of Rosie-Posie's parlor cuckoo clock and the lazy dance of dust motes in a thick beam of sunshine. She stretched out on the faded green couch and let her eyes roam from a framed watercolor of beets on the wall to the form of Olivia under a crocheted blanket on the floor. An empty cup of tea perched on her stomach rose and fell gently with her breath.

They'd passed a merry night together, as they often did, but Ivy's heart hadn't wholly been in it. Now she thought of Ruby again and wished she'd gone to see her when the thought had first occurred to her. Though Ruby's sparkling eyes and carefree laughter had brightened many an evening at the Green Dragon, there was a sadness behind them that Ivy fancied only she could see.

She got up, stretched her arms over her head, shook her curls into place, and let herself out quietly through Rosie-Posie's round front door.

Ruby lived in a modest dwelling a little ways down Bywater Road. On this balmy spring morning, with the scents of new growing things rising sweetly from the earth, Ivy made the walk with pleasure.

As she rapped neatly on Ruby's yellow door, Ivy was looking aside and taking reassurance from the signs of fresh digging in the garden. As long as a hobbit still had a patch of herbs going, there couldn't be too much to worry about. With her attention distracted, Ivy felt the door open under her hand and offered a sunny greeting before she realized that no one was there.

"Ruby?"

The door had not been latched properly and yawned slowly on its hinges to reveal a quiet hall with a green scarf straggled thoughtlessly across the floor. Ivy placed her bare hobbit foot on the cool tiles and eased inside.

"Are you at home? I'm dreadfully sorry to bother you, but…"

All the pegs on the wall were empty. Perhaps Ruby had gone out to market. With no wish to be thought meddlesome, Ivy turned hastily to leave. She froze when she caught sight of Ruby's parlor.

Books and papers were scattered over the floor - indeed a pastry of some kind appeared to have been trodden into the carpet. No hobbit, however absent-minded, would leave her home in this condition, and Ivy knew Ruby to be fastidious to a fault. Her father Drogo had passed on a year or two ago - could Ruby's grief be a worse burden than she'd let on?

Ivy ventured farther down the hall, a sense of dread setting her foot-fur bristling. "Ruby?" she called again as she rounded a corner to the bedroom.

An assortment of frocks in Ruby's preferred jewel tones lay will-nilly across the unmade bed. The curtains had never been drawn to greet the sun. Ivy's belly squirmed like an overturned turtle.

Something glinted on the floor and she picked up a square of metal. A plain belt buckle, with the prong broken off, far larger than any hobbit would use. Ivy thought again of the scarf in the entryway and scurried back down the hall to gather it up. As she'd feared, the knit was clumsily large, the length excessive, and a musky smell hung about it. Men in the Shire!?

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	3. Chapter 3

Rosie-Posie and the others assumed that Ivy had left to attend to her spring festival preparations or to try to make Farmer Duckweed see reason where his vacant fields were concerned. Ever the thoughtful hostess, Rosie-Posie set out nut muffins and tea for their second breakfast in the cluttered, jam-smudged kitchen and got to work chopping mushrooms for garden omelets because it would soon be time for elevensies and it should be quite substantial, what with sleeping through first breakfast.

Carrying a basket of fresh chives and sprigs of thyme for the omelet, Olivia puttered in and poured four cups of tea (on the off chance that Ivy would return).

"What should we do today?" she asked. "I'd like to write a letter or two to some friends in Tuckborough. Or we could find a sunny hollow in the woods and read stories to each other. Oh! Those mushrooms are lovely!"

"I'm going to be busy most of the day," Rosie-Posie said. "Granny Bun asked me to organize her library for her."

Dismayed, Olivia let a sprig of thyme she had been rapturously sniffing drop to the rough old tabletop. "Isn't her library the third biggest in the Shire?"

"Yes!"

"I suppose she doesn't have anyone else to put it in order for her?"

Rosie-Posie shrugged and stopped cooking long enough to cut a muffin in half and smear it with butter. "This summer Granny Bun will be two-hundred and twelve."

"Goodness!"

With her nose in one of Rosie-Posie's books, Pearl seated herself without looking up and took a sip from Olivia's teacup. "Did you know that radishes grow spicy pods, suitable for garnishing a salad?"

Any mention of a new ingredient brought great excitement to these hobbits, especially an ingredient that had been hiding under their very noses. They dropped what they were doing and gathered around Pearl, venturing other components to the imagined salad that now formed a bright object on the horizon.

Olivia, as she was wont to do, declared that they should not overlook the potential for radish-pod soup.

Then the front door crashed open and they were all sent tumbling around the kitchen in their surprise. Rosie-Posie upset her cutting board and chunks of mushroom rained over them.

"Here you are!" Ivy said, leaping through the doorway. "Look what I've found at Ruby's! She's been made off with!"

Peeping and clucking their distress, the three hobbits heard out Ivy's tale, and soothed their poor shaken-up friend with muffins and tea. They were each so earnest in their ministrations that she soon had a whole plate of buttered muffins in her lap, a cup of tea in each hand, and another steaming on the table in front of her.

"Who is this man?" Olivia asked, hugging her teacup to her chest.

"I don't know! I've never seen a man before, anywhere in the Shire!"

The belt buckle sat on the table dwarfing the teapot. To a hobbit they were all picturing the great hulking brutish creature it had belonged to, variously adding scars and soiled boots and a snarling face. Of course most humans were as peaceful as hobbits, but they had a fearsome streak to them, and this rose to the forefront as the four shivered in Rosie-Posie's sunny kitchen.

Someone had to be informed of this terrible crime, so the hobbits took their mysterious belt buckle and scarf straight to the Mayor of Michel Delving.

He was sitting in the shade outside his hobbit hole when they found him, half-moon spectacles balanced on his round little nose, darning a brown sock.

"Mayor Toadburr!" Ivy began without ceremony, dropping the big square of metal in his lap. "Something terrible has happened!"

The mayor took in the sight of her and her three panting friends. His familiarity with them was largely through the griping of other hobbits about their wayward behavior, but like most, he thought them solid citizens of the Shire at heart, who would soon settle down into respectable folk. Not soon enough, from the look of things.

"My dear ladies," he said. "I feel quite as though a row of sunflowers has sprung up in front of me. What brings you to my quiet garden?"

"It's Ruby Broadbean! She's been spirited away by a great filthy man!"

Mayor Toadburr heard them out with increasing annoyance. "I've never seen such a silly bunch of hobbits in all my days," he said finally. "The Broadbeans have always been collectors of artifacts. Just because Ruby is a slatternly-"

Pearl gasped and Mayor Toadburr curbed himself there.

"Ivy Bramble," he began more kindly. "I've been meaning to mention… Your plans for a spring festival are the talk of the Shire, but somehow or other you forgot my bagpipe band."

Ivy went stiff. She had been hoping to treat her fellow hobbits to an occasion free of Mayor Toadburr's interminable bagpipe solos.

"Then you're not going to do anything about Ruby? I tell you she's been taken! At least one man has been here raiding Hobbiton of its maidens!"

The mayor rolled his eyes. "I'll have a word with the watch, and tell the bounders to mind the borders with extra caution. Does that satisfy you?"

With a huff, Ivy snatched up her piece of evidence, turned on her heel, and stomped through Mayor Toadburr's petunias.

The others caught up with her halfway to Waymeet.

"What a stodgy old duffer," Rosie-Posie said.

"Rosie, I think you are too charitable!"

"Maybe she'll turn up," Pearl said uncertainly.

Ivy shook her head, taking a curl to the eye and swearing so that an old hobbit across the lane became quite put out.

"I'm going to find her," she said. "You may come with me or not, as you choose."

"What?" Olivia put on a little burst of speed. "Where?"

"Where the humans are," Ivy said with a shade less pluck. She offered the next word in a small yet steady voice: "Bree."

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	4. Chapter 4

Each of the hobbits returned to her own hobbit hole to pack for the journey, planning to meet at Pearl and Ivy's gate when they were ready to go. The breezy afternoon found three of them sharing a large apple tart and waiting for the last of their number to arrive.

"Brave dears," said Rosie-Posie, patting Ivy's shaggy white pony on the nose. Bon and his black-and-white speckled brother had never ventured out of the Shire - indeed they spent most of their time lounging in flower-dappled grass and drinking sweet creek water. And now they would be carrying two hobbits apiece all the way to Bree.

She sneaked them each a fortifying morsel of tart while Ivy adjusted the saddle.

"Oh dear," Pearl said, and they both looked round to see Mungo Milkweed coming up the path with a bunch of violets in his hand.

As he got closer, his befuddlement grew.

"I say! What are you doing?"

"Ruby's been snatched by a man," Ivy said readily. "We're going to Bree to find her."

Mungo gave a start and the flowers dropped to the ground. "Snatched! Are you sure?"

"Doesn't she seem sure?" Rosie-Posie cut in. "This is serious business."

So serious that she'd put off helping in her granny's library, filial hobbit though she was, which made her eager to justify their mission.

"Just the three of you?" Mungo asked, collecting his posy off the ground. "Don't you have any gentlemen hobbits to escort you? It's an awfully long way."

"Olivia Chubb will be with us," Rosie-Posie said loftily. "Anyway we don't have time for this silliness. Deliver your flowers and be about your business."

She hadn't meant to be quite so severe, but luckily Mungo didn't let the thoughts, opinions or preferences of other hobbits, especially lady hobbits, impose upon his chosen reality.

He addressed himself to Pearl as she accepted his bouquet. "I had packed a picnic for us as a surprise," Mungo said, overheard by Ivy and Rosie-Posie, who listened with fascinated amusement. "I hope you'll be tempted to stay. All this excitement is sure to upset you, my dear, delicate dove."

Pearl's cheeks burned red.

The clank and scuffle of a heavily burdened hobbit's approach made a welcome interruption. When Olivia left her snug dwelling, it was only after the most thorough consideration of what might be needed and what they might not realize they needed until it was too late to turn back. While she labored up the path under the weight of two bursting rucksacks, Ivy and Rosie-Posie helped each other onto the back of speckled Poachkin, letting Mungo know they wouldn't be hindered.

"Hello, Mungo," Olivia said with her customary courtesy. "How are you?"

"A little worried, if you must know!"

"What's this?" Pearl got ahold of Olivia's pack and stopped a ball of yarn from falling out. "Yarn?"

"What if we want to knit tonight when we get to the The Golden Perch?" Olivia said. "I also have a book of fables, and a selection of teas, and some wine-"

Bon snorted and stamped as if he knew he'd be asked to carry it all.

"I'll be back in a couple of days," Pearl told Mungo hurriedly as she and Olivia wrangled her packs onto the incredulous pony. "Don't worry about us. It's just a short trip!"

Their stay at The Golden Perch by the Brandywine river was pleasant enough to let them forget for an evening their fear for Ruby. Late into the night they sat by the sparkling water sharing a bottle of wine with a few other friendly hobbits. How refreshing to meet new faces! There was nothing to fear in leaving their little corner of the Shire after all.

The ponies slept deeply after a dinner of tasty oats, and even they trotted along with a new vigor the next morning. All along the East Road the hobbits sang rounds together and tossed seedcakes from one to the other, feeling full of their own intrepidness.

Then they reached Bree, and an awed hush fell among them. To these young hobbits it seemed a vast and cluttered place, cobblestones sealing out any chance of springy grass, looming wattle and daub facades blocking the spring sun, and men tall enough to look them straight in the face on ponyback.

And look they did, even though the town was not without a glimpse of other hobbits going confidently around corners and into shops as if it were all perfectly normal. Pearl and the others quickly realized that they, with flowers carelessly woven into their hair and frilly spring-colored frocks, not to mention plump, pasture-raised ponies, stood out as starkly as one of these city hobbits would have done in the Shire.

"Hello little bumpkins," a man said kindly when they stopped at an intersection to orient themselves. "What brings you to Bree all alone?"

Alone? What tosh. They were four hobbits and two ponies. A veritable crowd. Ivy sat up tall and cleared her throat, while Rosie-Posie peeked from behind her. "We're looking for The Prancing Pony, and for a friend. Ruby Broadbean. A good healthy round hobbit with orangey hair."

The ponies were easily startled by a passing horse. They had never met a horse before, and regarded it with deep distrust. The man caught their reins and steadied them without effort.

"I don't know where she might be, but I can take you little ducks to the inn."

The hobbit girls clutched each other and shared quick, nervous glances as he led their ponies down the street, full of questions and easy conversation. While Olivia and Rosie-Posie responded politely, all the hobbits studied his friendly face and the cheerful green feather sticking out of his hat.

Men were not so fearsome all the time, they told themselves as their grips upon each other eased. They even offered him a seedcake, and he took it most graciously. By the time they got to the inn, the hobbits had all but recovered their fortitude.

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	5. Chapter 5

At the Inn of the Prancing Pony, Pearl and her friends secured a couple of cozy hobbit-sized rooms and went downstairs to have their dinner. Grubby, drunken men roared with laughter at their outsized man-tables. Everything was man-sized, in fact, so the hobbits all shared a couple of monstrous pies between them, jokingly wielding their butter knives like daggers. If they had thought the Green Dragon was ever crowded, beer-splashed or filled with the din of carousal, they now took it all back.

"Humans don't wash much," Olivia observed. She tasted her cup of wine and made a face. "Very oaky!"

"I think it's great," said Rosie-Posie. She took a deep interest in the customs of other races, and now that they'd gotten this far, she was emboldened to raise her half-pint to the various men who took notice of their curly-headed, barefooted group. "They're all so enormous. They must eat a wheel of cheese each, per day."

Pearl had laid a map out at her end of the table with Ivy, and they muttered to each other about how near or far they were now to various landmarks. Pearl kept measuring the distance back to the Shire and promising herself they would be home again by Wednesday, while Ivy pointed out how much closer they were to Rivendell, where the elvish architecture was the stuff of legend.

"We could pretend we're lost," she said. "And just wander in."

Pearl shuddered. "They'd be so cross with us. We couldn't."

Olivia and Rosie-Posie spared a glance for the map, but they were too caught up in the brash bustle of men to give their attention to something so two-dimensional.

Rosie-Posie took a pipe from her pocket and knocked some ash out against the table.

"Should we have something else?" Olivia asked, collecting the last crumbs of butter crust with a press of her finger. "I wonder if they have desserts."

"You must ask them."

Rosie-Posie kept an eye on Olivia as she dodged and inched her way across the floor, setting up noises of bemusement among the men, especially the most pickled among them. As Rosie was thumbing some nice hobbit leaf into the bowl of her pipe, a man in a floppy hat appeared at her elbow, holding a pipe of his own.

"Hello, little miss," he said. "Odd to see a lady hobbit enjoying a pipe."

His friend waved shyly from behind him, and Rosie-Posie welcomed them magnanimously to sit across from her, touched by their diffidence.

Olivia had to keep her elbows out to fend bumbling men away from a tray of blackberry tarts as she made her way back to the table. The tarts went sliding perilously toward the edge when she saw the greasy young men sitting in her spot, chatting away to poor Rosie-Posie, who didn't seem to think anything of it.

"Hello," she said in a friendly yet warning tone as she plunked the tarts down and squeezed in next to Rosie-Posie. "What brings you to our table, sirs?"

Ivy and Pearl looked up from their map, primly expectant. Of course they would have felt rude showing their distrust, but now gladly added it to Olivia's.

"Easy there," one of the men said, showing his greyish teeth in a smile. "I'm Genry and this is Nem. We were just sharing our love of the leaf with Rosie, here."

Rosie-Posie handed Olivia her pipe, in which an odd-smelling substance smoldered. "Have a puff. It's a special blend from Staddle."

"Staddle?" Olivia felt her curls frizzing in the vapor from Rosie's pipe. "What? Where?"

"You're next," Genry said to Ivy and Pearl. "You'll love it, I promise. On the house, of course."

Rosie-Posie swayed on her seat, giggling at Nem. Giggling at a human?

"The stars are out tonight," the man said. "Shall we have a peek?"

"Hold it right there, knave," Olivia said, bashing out the pipe on the tabletop. The men flinched at the spray of embers. "You take your smelly weed and get clear of here before I- before I make a scene."

"What's all the fuss?" Genry said, wounded. "She's having a lovely time."

Rosie-Posie did look happy and flushed, but she frowned at this kerfuffle. "What's in this blend? I feel quite peculiar."

"Let's go up to our rooms," Olivia said, gathering up the tarts. "We've had enough fun for one night."

Ivy and Pearl bounced quickly to their feet, while Rosie-Posie felt a strange tingle in her limbs and couldn't quite get them to carry her. "Why is there a cat on the table?" she said, staring at the candlestick.

"She needs a little fresh air, is all," Nem said, taking Rosie-Posie by her round little arm. "I'll take her."

"Did she not tell you to leave her be?" A woman with a big pewter jug in her hand loomed into the fray, red hair curly as a hobbit's, eyes fringed with a flare of crow's feet. "Be off before I give you a clout."

Ivy and Pearl hurried to help Rosie-Posie up and sheltered her behind the woman's skirts. Now that she'd menaced them, the men quickly slunk away, leaving only a bitter glare as a parting gift.

"I wish they'd tested me," the woman said. "Those two need a bit of correctin' between the ears."

"My gracious!" Olivia said.

"The city is quite awful!" Pearl agreed, all atwitter.

The woman, Nora, set her jug down and carried a very dizzy Rosie-Posie up to her room.

"The door will lock up secure," she told the hobbits, after she'd had a good harangue about the degenerate young men of Bree. "And I won't let those two through the door. Not tonight or ever!"

"I'm so sorry!" Ivy said to Rosie-Posie as she stroked her curls and tried to calm her. "I didn't know our search for Ruby would lead to all this!"

Nora paused in tucking another blanket around Rosie-Posie. "Not another country hobbit?"

"Yes! Have you seen her? Orangey hair? With a terrible, nasty, awful man?"

"Well! I have, at that! She didn't say much, and the man was quite mysterious, cloaked to hide himself, but he asked about the Old South Road."

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	6. Chapter 6

The road south of Bree cut between rolling ridges, whose whispering trees seemed to watch with more derisive puzzlement than even the humans had, especially after Pearl told the other hobbits that the trees hid, on one side, ancient haunted barrows.

"I wonder if the spirits can come out," she kept saying. "I wonder if they'll venture this far. I wonder if they're awake in the day."

The other hobbits strove to ignore her. If it was indeed day, the sun could be a bit more decisive about it. Gray skies and damp winds had them huddling in their thin spring capes. All the fun had drained from their adventure, and though they continued with more resolve than ever (especially Rosie-Posie, whose encounter with the men of Bree had put her very much off humans, "for good and all"), it was only through grim composure that they kept from fretting and weeping on each other.

"You're only a day behind them, loves," Nora had told them as they bundled up their ponies that morning. "You'll soon catch up."

And as soon as they did, that man, whoever he was, would find himself overpowered and trussed up before he could make a noise. They had it all planned.

The day wore on and they had to rest their ponies, and themselves.

"My poor bones," Ivy said, bending and stretching this way and that.

Olivia dabbed at a wine spill on her white and yellow frock. Their standards of dress had lowered considerably. Their curls were in disarray. Their foot fur needed combing. She sat on a rock and tried to put herself in order.

"We can't stop long," Rosie-Posie said. "Here's a leftover tart for each of you, and an apple, and a piece of cheese, and a sausage roll. I'm sorry there isn't more, but we have to save it until we find another town."

"There isn't anything to find," Pearl said. "It's all empty space on my maps."

"Then we'd better get moving," Olivia said briskly. "For all we know he's on a big old man-horse, tearing along, turning poor Ruby's insides to pudding."

Ivy knew Olivia was right, but she wished she could just get a little closer to the Barrow Downs first and have a peek at the mysterious old structures. The cool air tickled through her curls. The unseen space beyond the trees beckoned her. Perhaps, just a little, she wanted to see what dwelled in the old stones there, if the dead could be said to dwell.

Maybe she'd have a chance on their way back.

Poachkin and Bon shivered under her hands as she brushed them. They weren't used to such exposure to the elements. Bon lifted his head, backing up, snapping his ears forward.

"What is it, dearie?"

"Oh no," Pearl said, squeezing the jam from her tart as she stared past them. "Something's coming!"

At first they thought this was more of her morbid imagination. Olivia, naturally cautious, hustled them toward the ponies and boosted them on. "No point lingering here," she said. But as she got up behind Pearl, Poachkin and Bon snorted and stamped and wheeled out of control.

An odd sort of gloating croak broke through the trees and the hobbits craned around to see a massive beast creep out onto a ridgetop. The sharp yellow fangs and bristling scruff were so fearsome that they almost didn't notice the rider.

"We're done for!" Pearl squeaked, and the ponies abandoned their terrified stumblings to bolt flat out, each in a different direction.

These stout little fellows may never have seen a warg before, or an orc, but they knew what to do when they saw one. Pearl and Olivia held on for dear life as Bon stretched his legs and carried them back the way they'd come, off onto a grown-over path they'd never noticed, and into wild lands they'd hoped never to explore.

Ivy and Rosie-Posie, meanwhile, on the scrappier, more ornery Poachkin, found themselves rattling along at top speed up and down hills with the foul steam of warg breath wrinkling the backs of their frocks.

Just when it seemed that the warg, goaded by sharp orc heels, would snap them up in its snarling jaws, the thing fell back, the orc's awful laughter fading just enough to make them think they were getting away before surging forward again. Poor Poachkin was tiring. Ivy squeezed his neck, fighting the image in her mind of her pony making a meal for horrible monster.

Behind her, Rosie-Posie was up to something, shifting about and hanging onto Ivy alternately with one hand, then the other. "Got it," she said triumphantly.

Ivy risked a peek back and saw Olivia's prized cast iron teapot fly out of Rosie-Posie's hands. A loud clang resonated through the air, and they flew away from the warg as it bounced and rolled behind them.

Poachkin slowed soon after, staggering to a stop, head down, sides heaving. Ivy hopped off as soon as she could, landing on rubbery legs that gave under her.

"Are you all right?" Rosie-Posie tried to help her up, but got little help from Ivy. "We have to get back to the road. We have to find the others!"

Ivy scrambled up and rubbed the sweat from her pony's brow. "Which way?"

They turned in place, scanning the gnarled trees and the bleak hillsides. Nowhere was any sign of which way they'd come from or which way they should go. Except- A slimy greyish face popped up over a hillock.

"You halfling scum!" the orc shrieked. "I'll rip your innards to shrips and shreds!"

"Oh no!"

They looked at their packs, but there wasn't time to dig for something to use as a weapon, and what could they possibly have that would be a match for the long, rusty iron blade the orc brandished?

This was, without doubt, the worst thing that had ever taken place in their tea-drenched, biscuit-filled lives.

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	7. Chapter 7

"And once I've shripped you to bloodly shreds, I'll have that pony off of you!" the orc ranted as he scuttled down the uneven slope. "You, the big one! You're first!"

Ivy and Rosie-Posie ran around in a tight circle while their wits fizzed and sputtered. "What do we do? What can be done?"

This flurry of activity stunned the orc momentarily. His crusty, crooked ears wiggled and he slowed his approach.

"You're lady things," he observed with sly apprehension.

"We're hobbits! Oh, don't hurt us!" Rosie-Posie cried, seizing on this chance for parley. "We're just on a little trip to find our friend! We don't want any trouble!"

"I've never eaten a lady hobbit before." The orc licked at his blackened teeth. "They must be tender and stuffed with farm-food."

"You're not going to eat us," Ivy said, baffled. "What a horrible idea."

The orc pointed his shabby sword at her. "Shouldn't have killed my warg, then," he growled. "It wern't even mine! I'll be in hot grease for that!"

"Well, you were chasing us!" Rosie-Posie protested.

"Enough chat!" He leapt forward and Ivy and Rosie-Posie scurried out of the way.

Poachkin waggled about and picked up his hooves. While he was tired out and reluctant to leave the hobbits, the stench of the orc was almost too much to bear.

In all her days Rosie-Posie would never have thought they would run into such a terrible thing on a simple trip out of the Shire. But the orc had a face, and presumably a heart somewhere in that carcass of his. Like any living creature, he had to harbor a fondness for pies and tea.

"Stop that," she said, putting on her most matronly voice, arms akimbo. "If you're hungry, you must share some of our cakes. Maybe you'd like a sausage."

Ivy gasped.

The orc dismissed the notion with a juicy snort. "I'll have all your vittles once you're dead."

It was plain to Ivy what Rosie-Posie was trying to do, but she considered the time for such machinations long over. If this foul thing so much as touched Poachkin, she didn't care how scaly and vile it was to the touch - she would tear its ears off. She had already spotted a good-sized rock in the grass and was edging towards it, telling herself she could bash the orc over the head and he would go into a tranquil sleep.

"Now, which of you should I eat, and which bring away?" the orc cackled softly, green eyes glinting over the curves under Rosie-Posie's bright floral dress. "A plump piece of meat will make up for the warg, a bit. Which of you is fattest? I'll take the second-fattest back, mind. No sense wasting the choicest fare on those swine."

"How dare you!" said Rosie-Posie, raising her voice and becoming increasingly shrill. "You put that knife down this instant! How could you? You- you monster! We've been nothing but civil! Were you raised in a- in a puddle of sludge? It certainly looks that way! Your mother would be ashamed of you! To say nothing of _my_ mother, who I'm sure would have nothing to do with such a brute as you!"

"Aaargh!" The orc rubbed at an ear and backed her up at swordpoint. "Shut it! You're both for the pot!"

With his attention distracted, the orc missed Ivy's dive for the rock. She sprang up with the mud-caked weapon in hand, hauled it back over her head, and got a running start to bring it down on the orc.

"Halt!"

At a shout from another of the surrounding hilltops, everyone startled and Ivy's momentum took her staggering to one side. She collided with Poachkin and loosed the rock over his back to bounce harmlessly in the grass.

"Drat!" she swore, wishing for a saltier vocabulary.

Rosie-Posie shoved the orc's blade away and kicked him in the shin, but the beastly fellow only had eyes for the man tromping down the hill. A human! With tousled hair, deep, stern eyes and a face full of squared-off masculine angles, the young man made straight for the hissing orc with a shiny short sword in his hand.

"Stand clear, maidens!" His voice rang out confident and clear despite his obvious youth. "Your deliverance is at hand!"

The hobbits stared at the newcomer, stunned by his bluster and fascinated by the closing distance between the orc's and the human's naked blades. Poachkin let out a whinny, reared up, and pounded a solid hoof into the orc's head.

"Oh my!"

Ivy jumped out of the way of the orc-sword as it clattered from the creature's senseless hand.

The young man slowed, frowned, but continued striding. "Hmm," he said. "Neatly done…"

"It would have been done sooner if you hadn't made such a grand entrance!" Ivy said, hugging Poachkin's snout. It was unthinkable, taking a life - even that of a hobbit-eating orc. Poachkin had saved her from that burden, a burden she would have been willing to accept for the sake of sweet Rosie-Posie. Her poor pony would never be the same. "Did you not see what I was about to do?"

"Is he- Is he dead?" Rosie-Posie asked breathlessly, extending the big toe of a furry foot to prod the orc's elbow.

The young man waved her away. "Don't touch it. I see signs that it still draws breath."

For a moment they all watched blood ooze from the orc's gray lump of a head. The man, twice their height, had a moment to study the two of them. Ringlets, round little bodies wrapped in spring-colored frills - there could be no mistake; these were lady hobbits.

"We're lucky Poachkin stepped in," Ivy continued, still overwhelmed by what could have happened. She had awful visions of that ragged black sword shearing into Rosie-Posie's bodice.

"Well, pardon me for coming to your rescue," the young man said with a sour quirk of the lips. "I'm sure two hobbit maids and a pony would have been more than a match for any monster."

Ivy glared at him. He was no more than a boy, really. A brat!

"We're just a bit shaken up," Rosie-Posie told him with some impatience. "And not to be rude, but we've had to be careful of strange men."

"I'm not a strange man." With a gurgling croak the orc strained to lift its head. The man glanced down and casually sunk his gleaming sword into its back. "I'm called Strider, at your service."

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End file.
